Please note our new postal address when sending
contributions to the legal fund:
121 5th Avenue, PMB #150
Brooklyn, New York 11217
About DDDB
Our coalition consists of 21 community organizations and
there are 51 community organizations formally
aligned in opposition to the Ratner plan.

DDDB is a volunteer-run organization. We have over 5,000
subscribers to our email newsletter, and 7,000 petition
signers. Over 800 volunteers have registered with DDDB
to form our various teams, task-forces and committees
and we have over 150 block captains. We have a 20 person
volunteer legal team of local lawyers supplementing our
retained attorneys.

We are funded entirely by individual donations from the community at large
and through various fundraising events we and supporters have organized.

The ESDC had recently added a new public
hearing on the Draft
Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) on September 18th. By law the ESDC must
hold written public comment open for ten days after the public hearing. Until
today that comment period was scheduled to end on September 22nd. The ESDC would
have been breaking the law if it maintained that date. So today it announced the
new written comment deadline is September 29th.

We think that this August
28 letter [pdf] from our attorney Jeffrey Baker to the ESDC may have forced
their hand, and convinced them that abiding by State statutes is the right thing
to do. It's unfortunate they needed to be told. Here is an excerpt from that
letter:

As you know, the SEQRA [State Environmental Quality Review Act] regulations
require that the lead agency receive public comments on an DEIS for “no less
than 10 calendar days following a public hearing at which the environmental
impacts of the proposed action are considered”. 6 NYCRR § 617.9(a)(4)(iii).
Clearly that regulation applies to ESDC’s “Community Forums”. We are not aware
of any factual or legal distinction between the “public hearing” held on August
23rd and the “community forums” to be held on September 12th and 18th. At both
the “hearing” and the “forum” comments are being taken on the DEIS, a transcript
is being made and all of the comments are being considered. Furthermore, ESDC’s
“Basic Protocol for the Community Forums” notes that persons who signed up to
speak at the public hearing but were not given an opportunity to speak, will
be given priority at the community forums and that persons, including public
officials, who already spoke at the public hearing will not be permitted to
speak at the forum. Clearly, the “forums” are nothing more than a continuation
of the public hearing. Changing the name of the event does not alter its essential
nature. Since the forums are functionally identical to the hearing, the forums
must be deemed a continuation of the public hearing and thus comments must be
accepted for 10 calendar days following the last public hearing/forum.

Therefore we request that you confirm and publish a new notice recognizing that
written comments will be accepted until 5:30 PM on September 28, 2006.

In The Brooklyn Papers story there is this comment from the ESDC:

“We thought it was appropriate, and wanted to give the public more time
to review and comment on the project,” ESDC spokeswoman Jessica Copen later
told The Brooklyn Papers.

Unfortunately the ESDC continues to schedule a DEIS hearing on September 12th,
primary election day. This is unconscionable (especially considering the 8-hour
commitment the last hearing required just to have a chance to
speak). A Daily
Gotham
blogger, Bouldin, called it "voter suppression"–we
won't argue with that. We'll have more to say about it in the coming days.